A fun outing

Scott and I love going to the City Market during the spring and summer.  We make a morning out of it and have lunch at a yummy middle eastern restaurant while we are there.  We invited Jenn and her fam to join us on Saturday.  Jenn and I were scrapbooking after this for the rest of the day, so this let little outing let us spend more of the day with our families.

Jenn's behind the camera on this pic and Liam is on the other side of our double stroller.


Liam enjoyed hanging out and watching the world go by.


Hanging out and waiting for our food to be ready.


Jeez - waiting is hard work.


Yay - time to eat! Lucky for us, Karsten is an adventurous eater - we usually get him a gyro and hummus.


Look at that smile - it's contagious!


Eden enjoyed her lunch creation of rice in a pita pocket.


It was a fun Saturday morning followed by a great girls day of scrapbooking.

Still splashin'

We're still in the midst of weekly swim lessons for Karsten!  This week they learned how to push off the wall going forwards and backwards.  They also learned how to turn over in the water like a doggie (wearing a life vest).  Karsten thought it was pretty cool that he could roll over like Madison.



He did suffer a wound in the pool at this lesson.  When he was jumping into the pool, he curled his little toes around the edge and drug his feet down the side of the pool when he jumped in.  OUCH - several of his lil toes were scraped up and bleeding, so we had an early (and dramatic) exit from the pool.  There were lots of tears, but minimal injury, thank goodness!  Lesson learned - jump AWAY from the wall and into the pool!

Wordless Wednesday - {love} plaid shorts

Block Fest

We've been lucky enough to have a wonderful Parents as Teacher (PAT) educator to visit us regularly since Karsten was born.  We're sad that we only have one more visit with her, since the free PAT service from the school district runs out when Karsten turns 3.  Since there are so many families on the waiting list, each family who applies can have 3 years of service, so we won't be able to have her visits for Liam.

PAT has some great events - this week we went to the Block Fest where PAT brought in several kinds of blocks from another school district.  We went to this event last year and Karsten had a great time.

Showing off one of the small wooden blocks.  All of the blocks at this station were the same size - Karsten was not as into this station, he wanted to clean up his blocks and move along to the next station.


He enjoyed building things with the tiny multi-color blocks; however, he really had fun when I started to ask him to give me '2 yellow blocks' or '4 green blocks'.  Then we started to play 'what's missing' which is one of his favorite games right now.  I would show him three or four blocks and we'd talk about how there was an orange, green, blue and yellow block.  Then he would close his eye, I would mix up the blocks and take one away.  When he opened his eyes, we would ask him which one was missing.  He did pretty well when we had three blocks, but it was definitely tougher with four blocks.




Sorry that some of the pictures are dark - my phone didn't do as well in the gym as Scott's phone.  Silly me forgot the camera.  Would you believe we were one of only a handful of people even taking pictures - perhaps I would have looked silly with a camera being the mamarazti (aka mommy paparazzi).  Nah, Karsten is used to that. :)


 He LOVED the giant blocks.  What kid doesn't love to build a giant tower - looks like both of my boys do! :)


We built a fort around Karsten then he pretended to be the big bad wolfe and blow the walls down.


These giant squishy blocks were fun.  You were able to stack them in different ways - like this triangle on the half moon shape.


Liam got into the action with the soft blocks.


 The wooden blocks (like the ones papa made!) were also a hit.  All the kids loved looking through the various colors on the blocks that had clear, colored glass in them.
 

 

Our first harvest

I blogged a while back about how Karsten and Scott were building our garden, but I never shared the end product with you.  I think my thought was that I wanted to make cute little signs that would tell us what each patch of dirt would grow into in the future.  Well, the garden has been planted for a month and we just have to remember what's planted in each patch of dirt.  :)

In the garden, we're attempting to grow strawberries, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, zucchini, squash and snap peas.  Since we planted this in early April, we've given up hope that the snap peas are going to grow from seeds and they have been replaced by red bell pepper plants.  We're also growing tomatoes and green beans in containers on our porch.  Look at us growing stuff!  (remember, I use 'us' loosely when referring to outside things - it's all Scott with a little help from me to decide what to grow).


We were outside checking on the garden and watering all the plants when we noticed that one of the strawberry plants had a red strawberry on it!  Our first harvest!  Karsten and I were very excited!

Scott told us to pick it and eat it outside - since I said 'EWW it needs to be washed' before I caught myself, Karsten wanted to take it inside and wash it before he ate it.  He's proudly showing off our first strawberry.


Karsten said the strawberry was good! He's eating and trying to smile at me in this picture.


Since then, we've gotten four more strawberries from the garden.  Scott and I have tried them and they're so yummy - a little more tart than the ones from the store, but super sweet and juicy!  Hope we get a few more this year and get a lot next year!  (I'm told this gardening thing takes time and patience...not two of my strong points)

Matt and the girl

Our friends Matt and Colleen came over for dinner and to meet Liam for the first time! They even offered to bring dinner to us - how nice was that!

We told Karsten that we had friends coming over and asked if he remembered Matt and Colleen from their last visit.  He remembered reading a story with Matt before bed during their last visit. Then he started asking 'will Matt play soccer with me' or 'will Matt play puzzles with me'  - the list went on and on.

Liam had a snack before Matt and Colleen got to our house, so he had a full tummy and was a happy lil guy when they arrived.


Matt and Liam hanging out and chatting.


Matt helped Scott put Karsten to bed, so Colleen and I got to give Liam his last bottle and snuggle with a sleepy baby . Liam was completely out - can you tell?  

When Matt and Scott took Karsten to bed, Karsten had to show Matt where we slept, where Liam slept and where he slept.  Then Karsten went into the guest room and told Matt that he could sleep 'here' on the red bed and 'the girl' could sleep on that side.  LOL - very specific instructions on which side of the bed they were to sleep on.  He was likely disappointed in the morning when he woke up and Matt and Colleen were not in the red bed!

A trial run

Last week, I picked up some Mickey Mouse underwear and we decided to give potty training a trial run on Saturday. I haven't read a book or decided on a method for how we would tackle this.  If we ask Karsten, he'll occasionally go on the potty and I think he's recognizing the urges to go, so really the ball is in our court to get this done. So - potty training trial run, here we come.

So, we talked it up with Karsten on Friday night and on the way home from swim lessons, and when we got home, we put the underwear on him.  He had an accident after he had been wearing them for about 30 minutes - lesson learned, we need to ask him very frequently if he needs to go.  After he got his second pair of underwear on, he did well.  We put him in a diaper for naptime but he woke up dry and went on the potty when he got up.  I think we ended the day with only one accident.

We had friends over that evening so we put him in a diaper (cheating, I know).  He spent some time in the underwear on Sunday and did well.  We need to commit another weekend to our potty training adventures.

I picked up some toys from the dollar bin to use as rewards for successful potty training.  This little watering can was a big hit.  Scott had a bunch of seeds to plant, so this pot became Karsten's flowers that he gets to water and take care of.  Check out the pants - we switched to PJ pants rather than shorts when we realized we might be going through them quickly. :)


Watering the green beans.

Green beans

Liam's first foray into solid food was green beans.  As we did with Karsten, we're making our baby food.  It's super easy to do and it looks way more appetizing than what you find in a jar of baby food.

Karsten helped Scott blend up the green beans.


Karsten was excited to see if Liam would like the green beans.  'Does him like them?'


Liam's not so sure about those green beans.  I can't blame him really, plain green beans without salt/pepper or seasoning are not too tasty.

Lil fish

If you ask Karsten about his favorite thing to do at swim lessons, he'll probably tell you that he likes to splash daddy. They have a great time in the pool, and I think Karsten is learning quite a bit at the same time. He's not a huge fan of floating on his back (neither am I - water in ears, ick!) but he'd doing a great job kicking his legs and moving his arms.

I may have distracted him from jumping in so I could take a picture. :)


All the little ones practicing the big jump into the pool.


They used the noodles for the first time during class today, I thought it might help him feel more at ease on his back, but nope.  He still preferred his tummy when they gave them time to practice their moves on the lazy river.


Liam and I have fun watching the boys swim.  Well, I watch them swim, this day Liam was having fun playing with his toes.

Wordless Wednesday - Just like mommy and daddy

Fun with Gaga

We had a great few days when Gaga came to visit! We were able to spend sone evenings with her and the boys had a great time!

Karsten showed Gaga all his legos. He built some towers, dumped out all the legos - you know, all the fun stuff.


Liam was mesmerized by Gaga sticking her tongue out at him.


Gaga brought some fun new toys for each of the boys.  Liam enjoyed his Mickey stuffed animal and would giggle each time we played with it.
 


He was playing with Mickey then fell asleep holding onto him.


Look, I got one of Gaga looking at the camera rather than Liam.  :)


We celebrated Gaga's birthday while she was here.  What's a birthday without cake?
 


Karsten helped Gaga blow out her candles.
 


Someone was getting sleepy
 


But he rallied to eat some oatmeal with Grandma.
 


Laughing with Grandma

Bouncing

Our house has been invaded by another piece of baby gear.  Liam enjoys the bouncy exersaucer and Karsten also enjoys helping Karsten bounce.  We have to keep a close eye on Karsten because he can really get Liam bouncing high.

Liam thinks his big brother is the coolest



Not so sure he's happy in here now.